Andrea goes exploring again!

So I arrived in Pécs on Monday where I had booked into the Ananas Hostel. I'd been really relieved to get back to a place that has hostels and the chance to meet some people. There were two to choose from, Naps and Ananas. Naps was my preferred hostel from the description and reviews but I desperately needed to do some laundry and Ananas has the laundry facilities Naps doesn't which is what made my decision for me. This is not the best hostel I have to say, in fact I think it fairer to say it's the worst I've ever stayed in and in future, given a similar choice, I'll just put up with dirty clothes. Thank heavens Pécs is such a lovely place or this could have been a complete nightmare!! Pécs, lovely Pécs. It really is nice here. It was the European City of Culture in 2010 and you can understand why. I missed the Pécs festival literally by a day (I arrived on the 25th and it ran until the 24th!) but the city has such amazing architecture you could spend your time just...

Since Thursday I have been in Héviz. Héviz is slightly odd as it has a disproportionate number of hairdressers. I thought Bulkington, the village I grew up in had a lot, but it is nothing put to Héviz! It's located about 4 miles west of Keszthely, the largest town on the western edge of Lake Balaton. I had originally wanted to stay in Keszthely but the accommodation there was too expensive so I ended up in Héviz  instead which I think actually turned out well. This area is very German and I'll explain why in today's history lesson! Before Germany's reunification, people in DDR were permitted to travel to Hungary because it was under communist rule at that time. People in the FDR could travel where they wished and so families and friends who were unable to cross the Berlin Wall to see each other, would holiday in the Lake Balaton area. As such, German is as common as Hungarian in this area (which I'm finding immensely helpful!!). The main attraction of Héviz (othe...

Tapolca. A place I think would be lovely to visit in good weather.  I say this as what I saw of it yesterday whilst the weather was good, I liked, and today, even though it's rained most of the day I still liked it. In good weather though you would get to enjoy the street cafes and restaurants and as it is, they're mostly shut in this weather. But as it's currently tipping it down, I'm not overly surprised! So as I mentioned yesterday, getting here involved taking a train from Balatonfured along Lake Balaton and up into Topolca and along the route the scenery was just beautiful. I've included the pictures I took below although they were through the train window so the quality isn't super good. Tapolca is encircled by 14 cone-shaped hills of basalt rock which means it's in a really picturesque setting. The main things to see here are the thermal pond: Which was super-clear and had very large fish in it (these were about 2 feet long) And the cave lake. This is...